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botski,

Good to see you back.

Flatlander,

Surely the driver behind M&A deals for the likes of Abbott isn't their own valuation, but their cash position? Abbott have strong cash flow and have just raised their full year guidance. According to Evercore, they have in excess of $40 billion of M&A capacity on their balance sheet.

Here's Abbotts CEO discussing M&A-

"We've generated a lot of strong cash flow, and quite frankly, it's been a meaningful step-up in that cash flow over the last 1.5 years or so," Ford said. "...We're in a great position now to be able to look at that."

Kumar noted that liquid biopsy and cancer screening diagnostics represents a massive market opportunity, and he asked Ford if that might be an area of interest, given Abbott's leadership position in other corners of the diagnostics market.

Not wanting to tip his hand entirely, Ford stopped short of answering the liquid biopsy question directly. His comments, however, do offer some insight as to where the companies’ priorities are in terms of M&A.

"Devices and diagnostics, I will say, are the areas that we're looking at more carefully," Ford said. "... The areas that you referenced are areas that we would be interested in looking at."

https://www.mddionline.com/covid-19/abbott-looking-ma-opportunities

Ivy,

Yes, have to admit that I'm very pleasantly surprised by the total potential size of the deal - $624m for a single preclinical mAb is a cracking deal. Hopefully Lindy Durrant will do some media later on and give further details, but first milestones could be triggered relatively quickly.

Glycans are notoriously difficult targets, much harder than proteins like PD-1 and others have tried but failed to generate mAbs that bind strongly enough to the target. The valuation suggests that preclinical results for this mAb (SC129?) have been excellent which bodes well for the other mAbs in Scancell's pipeline.

Crumbs,

Highly likely that the amount of upfront will remain confidential as Scancell have other collaborations in place and wouldn't want to reveal their hand in advance any future negotiations with other parties. It's fairly standard practice under these circumstances.

No mention of which mAb and no mention of Avidimab so looks like it's for the mAb only.

Fantastic news

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/SCLP/signs-commercial-license-agreement-with-genmab/15685822

Of course.

TF,

In reply to your last two posts to me.

Firstly, my reason for posting in the first place wasn't to 'correct', but to ensure that anybody who may have clicked your link fully understood that they were about to watch a video from somebody who has increasingly and repeatedly manipulated and misrepresented data and spread misinformation about covid. Moreover, he has refused to remove any of that misinformation and refused to respond to experts who have contacted him. These aren't simple and understandable minor mistakes - it's major stuff which is then taken up and amplified over and over on social media by antivax and covid conspiracy theorists.

You mention that his videos seemed credible and you like to take each one on its merits. I agree that they do seem credible, that's the whole point, but how can you possibly have the knowledge to take each one on its merits? How do you know what's true and what isn't? For example, when he picked data from a study to claim that the risk to children of vaccination was much higher than the risk of serious illness from Covid itself, even though the study was actually showing the complete opposite was true. Unless you were an expert and had read the full research paper, you wouldn't even think to question whether his interpretation of the data was correct.

As you can tell, I feel strongly about this and you'll have to forgive this rant, but you're right, in the beginning his videos were calming, helpful and informative. For that reason he has built up a massive following which includes many like my parents who used to hang on his every word. How many vulnerable people now will be worrying whether or not to get their booster because of John Campbell's videos?

Finally TF, I resent the suggestion that I'm being unfair based on your assumption that I have a problem with people making money from youtube videos. I have never said that. If you want to carry on watching his videos and want to post links here then that's obviously completely up to you, but I feel it's important that anyone following your link understands the history and that they'll be supporting and boosting the income of someone who has gained financially from spreading misinformation. That's all.

All IMO of course

Deepestblue,

10 pence is simply the nominal value of Angle's shares.

TF,

John Campbell has become a highly controversial figure and is fast becoming a hero of the antivax brigade. Before anyone clicks on the link in your post, it's worth googling 'Dr John Campbell misinformation' and you'll get plenty of results, including misinterpreting previous Pfizer documents. Then remember that there is a finacnial incentive to drive traffic to his youtube videos, he is paid per view and clicking on the link adds to the millions he has already made.

This is one of the more balanced accounts - I would really urge folks to watch the whole thing to appreciate how dangerous some of this misinformation can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGmRwQ4TZc4

lofas,

Bloody hell, if that's a glimmer of positivity then God help us.

Bantham,

He has laid out the strategy for commercialisation and unlike most AIM companies in the sector, it's clearly defined and has already started. They have built and equipped laboratories in both the UK and US - not on a whim, but because it was part of the strategy for commercialisation. They are in the final stages of optimising the ovarian cancer LTD and securing accreditation. They already have pharma services contracts in place, are signing distribution deals etc. but we have yet to see the outcome of negotiations with the big medtech companies, service CROs etc. It's hard to see how you can claim that the CEO hasn't set out his stall and hasn't committed to securing revenue.

Those who believe they have the knowledge and expertise to judge Andrew Newland's commercial performance at this stage are deluding themselves. Nobody here has sufficient information to make that judgement call, none of us have been privvy to the discussions taking place. Anyone with any understanding of the deal making process in the medtech/pharma industry would know that it's way too early to make that judgement call.

Of course there is risk here and it remains to be seen how successful Parsortix will be commercially. The fact that you only posted for the first time here a week ago and every post has been negative, suggests that you're much more comfortable having sold and that's absolutely fine, but don't kid yourself that you are in any postition to judge Andrew Newland's commercial skills. Far too early for that.

What do you mean by substantive? Can you give some examples?

Chester,

They'll have to pay for it first :)

Chester,

Re. your 9.35.

Ray is correct, Scancell (or Avidimab) aren't involved at all in Seagen's clinical trial. All that has happened is that Scancell have taken Seagen't SEA-CD40 monoclonal antibody and enhanced it with Avidimab and tested in in the lab. We don't know whether this involved any collaboration/cooperation from Seagen or not.

All 3 companies have the same financial year end (30th April). However, Scancell Ltd is a privately held company and so has 9 months to file annual returns, whereas Scancell Holdings as a listed company must report within 6 months. Scancell Ltd owns Zakari Therapeutics.

Johnny,

Firstly, it's absolutely not a stupid question and rest assured we are all looking at this as lay people (apart from Burble of course). You may well be right and I could be misreading the situation.

The trial record on clinicaltrials.gov isn't particularly clear or easy to follow. As you know, it lists 3 treatment arms. We can disregard arms 2 and 3 which are in the neoadjuvant setting, so that leaves treatment arm 1. The problem is that this section of the record doesn't give any breakdown regarding which patients will receive monotherapy Modi-1 and which will receive a combination of checkpoint inhibitor plus Modi-1, in fact it doesn't even mention any standard of care therapy.

You may remember that back in April, Scancell issued an RNS announcing a protocol amendment for the Modi1 trial and the next day Trinity Delta issued a new research note which included an overview of the trial design - see exhibit 7 in link below. I contacted LD at the time and asked whether the design in the Trinity update was the new new, amended trial protocol and she confirmed that it was, so I'm simply going by that. If you follow the colour coding, you'll see that both ovarian and breast cancer cohorts will be monotherapy Modi-1 which makes sense as currently checkpoint inhibitors aren't SOC treatments for these cancer types in any case. However that's not true for renal and head and neck cancers where CI's are approved SOC therapies and according to the diagram, both of these cohorts will be given a combination of Modi-1 and SOC checkpoint inhibitor. It may be that the diagram is wrong and they also intend to run monotherapy cohorts as well - who knows?

https://www.trinitydelta.org/research-notes/a-fresh-impetus-in-delivering-immune-oncology-vaccines/

Hang on a minute Bantham, this isn't a quick 'oh the rules are changing, let's shut the Toronto office' sort of decision and it's important to understand that the only reason Angle have a Toronto facility is through the 2017 acquisition of Axela for it's gene profiling system.

Regarding the tax changes, HMRC only published draft guidance at the end of July, there are still ongoing discussions between the BIA and HMRC and the final rules still haven't been agreed, let alone published. It's unfair and totally unrealistic to expect Angle to have made such an important decision so quickly and to have slipped it in with the interims.

Major strategic decisions such as this should only be made when all relevant facts have been fully evaluated. To do this, they would have needed to carry out a fully costed logistical analysis to ensure that the Guildford labs have the capability to take on all R&D and manufacturing functions carried out by Toronto and to identify all the costs and savings involved. This includes the obvious things such as what equipment is used, do Angle Toronto own it or lease it - if they own it, can it be transferred and adapted for UK use? Then there's the human side, identifying any skills/knowledge gaps, ensuring that they are complying with Canadian employment law, identifying the cost of laying people off, terminating leases etc. etc. etc. It's a big undertaking.

By the way, these R&D tax credit changes may affect any AIM listed bio carrying out research or clinical trials overseas and it's good to see Angle being proactive in taking action to mitigate the impact.

Finally, although you may think this RNS was pointless, it was a regulatory RNS.

Wonderful not wondereful

Debs,

Wondereful to hear that your friend's daughter has seen her tumour shrink by over one third. Even for those with life threatening illnesses and no other treatment options, it's a brave decision and a huge commitment to agree to take part in clinical trials. Am so pleased that she is seeing such a quick and impressive response and long may it continue.

Before Scancell can open the head and neck arm of the Modi-1 trial, they'll need to run 2 more safety cohorts - low followed by high dose of Modi-1 plus checkpoint inhibitor. Approval from the Safety Review Board is needed to commence the 3rd safety cohort and that will be based on their review of the data from the ongoing (2nd) safety cohort. So the Royal Marsden trial can't be Modi-1.